Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Thursday October 15, 2009 @08:29AM
from the get-a-lawyer dept.

BorgeStrand writes 'Patenting is an expensive process, even coming up with some sort of proof that your idea is unique (and thereby try to attract financing) may be prohibitive for the lone inventor. So what do you folks out there do when you come up with a good idea but don't have the means to patent it or market it to someone who will pay for the patenting process? And how much sense does it really make for the lone inventor to patent something? Would it make more sense to publish the whole idea, and make it (and my inventive brainpower) up for grabs? If my ideas are indeed valuable, what is the best way to gain anything from them without investing too much financially? What is your experience?'

This is slashdot, all patents are evil, and the most profitable thing for you to do would be to to let everyone know the details, and let them all build whatever it is you invented. That way, it gets worked on by different people in an open source way and you get a better ultimate product. And somehow you profit from that. I'm still trying to figure out that last part, but if a million slashdotters say something it can't be wrong.

This is slashdot, all patents are evil, and the most profitable thing for you to do would be to to let everyone know the details, and let them all build whatever it is you invented. That way, it gets worked on by different people in an open source way and you get a better ultimate product. And somehow you profit from that. I'm still trying to figure out that last part, but if a million slashdotters say something it can't be wrong.

I believe the standard notation for this is a single line containing three question marks.

For one case there was a device invented by a woman I know to aid in moving patients about in a hospital bed. It improves patient safety and staff safety. She was told that because she patented it, the companies would wait out her patent even though she was not seeking significant money for the idea. Profit for her would have been having a safer job.

Publishing would have been better, establishing prior art is sometimes more important since it encourages competitio

In a less sarcastic, slightly more useful vein, patenting something is expensive but not prohibitively so. A few thousand dollars, unless you get unlucky and the patent office starts getting all resistant. Though, because of the state of the legal profession today you might be able to find a patent lawyer cheap.

Do this - publish your idea in the most obscure way possible. Don't put it on the web. Instead, make sure some library like the one Sarah Palin likes to ban books from in Wasilla, Alaska. I kid you not - this is advice I've had from multiple patent attorneys. It protects your idea, and is nearly free, without much chance of tipping off your competitors.

Do this - publish your idea in the most obscure way possible.... I kid you not - this is advice I've had from multiple patent attorneys. It protects your idea, and is nearly free, without much chance of tipping off your competitors.

How does this protect your idea? IANAL, but it's my understanding that a public disclosure immediately invalidates your non-US patent rights, and starts a one-year clock ticking on the filing period for a US patent. The obscurity of your disclosure may prevent others from learning of your idea, but not disclosing it at all will have the same effect; neither method will prevent others from utilizing the idea, should they learn of it.

I think the idea is that you can publish really fast. If you're only interested in the US market then you can publish in a really obscure manner, file for patents as fast as possible and then if your patent is accepted you just never tell anyone about your obscure publishing and file for patents abroad.If your patent is rejected or competitors get there first but you've already published you can pull out your obscure published document to invalidate their patent and kill their advantage.

Well, the major benefit I can think of is that, if no competitor independently comes up with the idea within a year of that publication, then no one can patent your idea out from underneath you. If you publish in a more broadcast way, then a crafty and moral-free competitor might be able to patent it, and if they're large enough, might be able to out-lawyer a small inventor's attempt to prove that they didn't invent it themselves.

That's a pretty limited kind of protection, though, and it's not likely to r

Do this - publish your idea in the most obscure way possible.... I kid you not - this is advice I've had from multiple patent attorneys. It protects your idea, and is nearly free, without much chance of tipping off your competitors.

How does this protect your idea? IANAL, but it's my understanding that a public disclosure immediately invalidates your non-US patent rights, and starts a one-year clock ticking on the filing period for a US patent. The obscurity of your disclosure may prevent others from learning of your idea, but not disclosing it at all will have the same effect; neither method will prevent others from utilizing the idea, should they learn of it.

It helps protect your idea because if it's published, you have a lesser chance of becoming the next Robert Jacobsen [wikipedia.org], who wrote an open-source java software package that a sleazy company used to build their product upon, patent, and then sue Jacobsen for infringing on their patent. So far they've won tens of thousands of dollars from him, as well as the tens of thousands he's spent defending himself, although he seems to be winning the latest round of lawsuits.

In early days you were required to have a patent lawyer in order to perform a thorough search of the archives. They gave you the template and you wrote in the substance. You no longer need this http://www.google.com/patents/ [google.com] has all the patents listed in a very searchable format. you can do the search your self find all references and using legal zoom file the patent yourself. You don't even have to mail it there are patent offices all over the place. In my experience (or should I say research) you have a

On a more serious note, I don't support patents at all and suggest that, if you do decide to patent it, you at least attach some sort of irrevocable, royalty free licence to it, which would at least let you keep it around for defensive purposes in case you get sued. Just don't become a patent troll.

Also, perhaps instead of simply publishing it publicly for everyone immediately, you could find a company involved in a simil

I see no hint as to what BorgeStrand wants to patent. Is it some PHYSICAL ITEM OR METHOD?? Some NEW GADGET? If not, you need to look at COPYRIGHT LAW. "Patent or publish". It sounds to me like you, like most of corporate America, haven't a clue as to what a patent is SUPPOSED to be.

BorgeStrand needs to get off our lawns, at least until he's able to come back and post a meaningful question. "Patent or publish?" Just plain stupid.

Although that is an admirable sentiment, it does not work out in real life very often.

If I have money to invest, and then invest in something that helps humanity but doesn't provide a return on investment - I no longer have any money to invest on the next idea to help humanity. On the other hand, if I invest in something that shows a return while helping humanity I can then invest in more and more projects. This is how capitalism selects things helpful to mankind - something has to be helpful enough that

Geeks on slashdot get to have it both ways - getting rich while making the world a better place. Try starting a company that offers good jobs to deserving employees, and see you you feel as they raise good kids and enjoy their work. Invent something worthwhile, and force the world to benefit from it - you'd be very surprised at how often the world passes by perfectly good ides. Only the inventor can champion new technologies properly. Be a do-gooder: start companies, develop open source projects when it makes sense, improve the world with your ideas. Being a big geek rocks.

Your choice A should really be written as, "Give those moneys to any company or rich corp," as this is what would happen with publishing. IANAL, but wouldn't publishing establish prior art, which would mean anyone can profit, not just rich companies that might profit by patenting ideas that are neither published nor previously patented because it was too much trouble?

In this case, if the submitter didn't want to go through the hassle and risk of dealing with lawyers when it comes to patenting, he would a

Consider that X $ will be made from your idea, whatever you do. Would you rather A: Give those money to a rich corp. or B: Have those money for yourself...

Consider that an unpatented idea can be used by multiple corporations in competition, and that by not having to pay royalties all of those companies can sell the product for less because it costs them less to produce while still making the same profit.

Yes, a single source can charge what they want and pocket the money they'd have paid in royalties, but

FWIW, I've had a couple of patents which issued without any intervening office actions, but they were the exceptions. Most involved a few office actions, and a couple involved many office actions. Every office action involves a fee, even if the action was due to the PTO losing papers which they had officially acknowledged receiving (that case is still ongoing).

Also, publishing in some journal or on the web does not necessarily prevent someone else from filing a patent application on much the same thing. The US PTO does not and cannot search ALL possible publications when looking for prior art, and if a patent is wrongly issued, it would be up to you to challenge it in court (at much higher expense than actually getting a patent)). The PTO does search all US patents and US patent applications, however. So filing a patent application, and then abandoning it at the first office action, is a good and relatively cheap way of publishing your idea in a way that prevents everyone else from getting a patent on it. They'd have to make significant changes beyond anything clearly contemplated in your application to get their application through the PTO.

And that attitude is highly anti-innovative and characterizes one of the main problems with the US patent system.

If you abandon it at the first challenge, leaving it for the USPTO to automatically deny other claims along that line for you, then that which you thought patentable in the first place should then become public domain, excluded from collecting actions on your part, and those who might improve upon the idea, patenting the improvements but not your basic idea which would have to be named in their a

Let me state it this way: I know enough about patents to be able to see that this countries ability to innovate, improving products at the rate we were doing it 60 years ago, is now severely curtailed. Between patent trolls, and the current version of copyright, it is an insult to anyone who thinks he has a better idea.

Patents were originally set with a lifetime of 7 years, with the option of a one time 7 year renewal if the proper forms and fees were submitted. That short time of exclusivity encouraged

That is exactly what filing a patent and then abandoning it would do. The original applicant wouldn't have a patent, so nobody would owe the original applicant anything for the use of the idea. But it would prevent future applicants from patenting the original applicant's idea. That means no one has a patent and everyone can use the idea.

I have had several ideas I've wanted to patent but thought the entire process to be against the individual. I hear a lot of stories of people who go through the process to just have it killed by a corporation contesting the patent simply to stall it in court.

A small entity like myself can not afford to battle it out in court. I'd be out of money and no longer able to move the idea forward. It is really depressing when you look up the stories o

I hear a lot of stories of people who go through the process to just have it killed by a corporation contesting the patent simply to stall it in court.

That's the system in the EPO and many other jurisdictions. An objection or challenge can be filed in a period after the patent application is published, and this delays or prevents its issue. The matter must be resolved, normally by written arguments from both parties, and the EPO will deliver a reasoned judgement based on the merits of the arguments. There can be appeals and so forth, sometimes with oral arguments before a tribunal (I have participated in one such oral proceeding in Munchen). The cost for

If you patent, it'll be expensive.If you don't patent, but end up making it, someone else will patent it and sue you, that will be more expensive.However, if it'll never really be marketable, publish, someone might think oooo nifty, and hire you because it sounds great.

If you patent, it'll be expensive.
If you don't patent, but end up making it, someone else will patent it and sue you, that will be more expensive.

No to the second part-- if you publish before they file the patent, their patent filing won't help them, the patent is invalidated by prior art (=your publication).

In fact, if you keep good enough notes (signed and witnessed) to show your date of invention, and to show that you were diligent in working to bring the invention to workability (i.e., that you didn't just have the idea and abandon it), then they can't succeed in suing you, either, because you can prove you invented it first.

(However, if you had the idea, and didn't diligently work on reducing it to practive, you're out of luck. No cookies from the patent office to ideas that are abandoned and not reduced to practice.)

Nothing will stop them from filing their patent unless you are aware of their filing, and object.

Then, if you were to do something w/ your idea, they may very well sue you, regardless of their patent's invalidity, making the gamble that you'd rather settle than deal with the legal proceedings required to invalidate their patent.

These guys aren't doing it cause they're smart. They're doing it because they think there's easy money to be made, and it's a pain in the ass to defend y

If you patent, it'll be expensive.If you don't patent, but end up making it, someone else will patent it and sue you, that will be more expensive.

No to the second part-- if you publish before they file the patent, their patent filing won't help them, the patent is invalidated by prior art (=your publication).

That is the theory and, in some countries, patent examiners will look through reputable journals etc when looking for prior art but, in my experience, US examiners only look in existing US patents (and patent applications). Once a patent is granted it sounds like it is very difficult - in the US at least - to get it overturned.

The question is also where do you publish? If you can't get it into a journal, AFAIU one possible option might be just to file it as a patent and then abandon it before the really expensive charges occur. It should then, (again AFAIU), end up in the public domain.

Prior art doesn't necessarily stop them from patenting, and if they get the patent it won't necessarily stop them from suing. Sure, unless there's a travesty of justice (not out of the question) you'll win the lawsuit, but that won't necessarily keep it from being expensive.

In the US, you can apply for a provisional patent [uspto.gov] for $110. This is a simplified, essentially abstract patent application you can use to hold your place in the patent line while you go off and find someone to commercialize/help you commercialize your idea.

You've still got a year after publication to make a provisional filing, but you also get a year after the provisional filing before the full application.

Actually, if you keep a good notebook of your work that's dated and signed by yourself, and for extra precauction a "reader's signature" of a second, unrelated party, it doesn't matter if your publish your work, you can still prove that you have precedent and can challenge any patents lawsuits filed at a later time and take over the patent for yourself.

No need to file or publish as long as you keep good notes. Of course, if you thought it was a million dollar idea, why are you not patenting it? Also, you

If you live in the US, you can do both. First send in a provisional patent to the USPTO using their electronic filing system (costs $110), then publish your idea. You have a year to decide to patent the idea or not, and if you decide not to, all you are out is $110.

I had an IP lawyer tell me that the provisional patent is completely pointless. You don't have to file a provisional patent to get this protection. You can publish, then patent up to a year later and your idea is still protected.

I had an IP lawyer tell me that the provisional patent is completely pointless. You don't have to file a provisional patent to get this protection. You can publish, then patent up to a year later and your idea is still protected.

...but only in the US. If you do as suggested above you will have screwed up your protection for the rest of the world (or at least the majority of it:-) ). Get your patent filed first, to get a "priority date" and you then have, something like, a year to file in other countries. In the mean time you can publish if you want.

In the Netherlands you can deposit the design at a local tax office. Yes you read that correct. They will file it for you, and it can be used as official proof in a court case. It costs about $50. This is not a patent, but it could protect you against one. Possibly other countries offer a similar service.

I believe the only unavoidable cost of getting a patent is the filing fee (and the issuing fee, if it's accepted), but that only amounts to a few hundred dollars. There are maintenance fees every few years, and while these are a bit more expensive, it's not an insurmountable expense. All the prior work research and everything can be done by an individual, assuming they're determined and resourceful, although depending on the nature of the patent that could get real tricky.

What you should really ask is, "What's the purpose of getting this patent?" Having a patent doesn't automatically protect you from people stealing the idea, or ensure that you'll be duly compensated if someone decides to use it. The most onerous part of the patenting and licensing process comes after you get the patent - patent battles can go on for years or decades, and there's no guarantee that you'll win any compensation after almost unavoidably spending a ton of money to fight the good fight, often against people with far more resources than yourself.

If you think you can really do something with your invention and are willing to take on the entirely separate and probably even more difficult task of marketing the invention to a company and getting them to distribute it or license it, then a patent is probably something to seriously consider. If you want to patent it because it's your idea and you're proud of it, but you don't necessarily see yourself pursuing it in a commercial sense, then in my opinion you're probably better off just publishing it and taking satisfaction in the fact that you're contributing to the knowledge base.

I believe the only unavoidable cost of getting a patent is the filing fee (and the issuing fee, if it's accepted), but that only amounts to a few hundred dollars. There are maintenance fees every few years, and while these are a bit more expensive, it's not an insurmountable expense. All the prior work research and everything can be done by an individual, assuming they're determined and resourceful, although depending on the nature of the patent that could get real tricky.

This is true, and I like to see people doing things on their own as much as possible. But the unfortunate truth in this case is that writing a good patent is actually quite hard, and I'd hate to see the OP put a great deal of work into an invention, another great deal of work into writing the patent, and a bit more money into filing fees only to have nothing to show for it but an easily circumventable patent and $0.00 in royalty payments because of it. If you really think your invention might be valuable, h

The sum of the standard responses will be:
1) Develop the thing on your own. If you can't prototype it you don't have anything of interest to the folks you want to sell to.
2) Get a provisional patent - they're cheap and should protect you while trying to pimp your prototype.
3) There is NO market for pure ideas - if that's all you've got, nobody cares enough to pay you for that. Bringing something to market is far-far harder than coming up with an idea.

Being a person whose has ideas and these same questions for a long time, I can say I agree with all the above.

If it's possible for slashdot to agree on anything, it's this. Oh, and you'll get the "patents are evil" stuff too, but that doesn't actually answer your question.

Some of the best advice on this was "Value = Risk Reduction". The closer to a marketable product you are, the more valuable your idea is. If you've done the basic research, prototypes, product design, market research, basic manufacturing and liability research, you have a very valuable piece of property to sell for a nice bit of coin. If all you have is "I had this cool idea while I was smokin' a bowl", then all you can maybe expect is a cup of coffee while telling the story. Like others have said, patent i

I have given this thought in the past and figured that since the USPTO does a lot of legwork to check out patents before granting them, why not let them do the research and then redo the patent filing based upon the rejection? Of course, the speed at which these are processed and public availability of filings would most likely make this simplistic scenario unrealistic. It was a thought, none-the-less.

I have given this thought in the past and figured that since the USPTO does a lot of legwork to check out patents before granting them, why not let them do the research and then redo the patent filing based upon the rejection?

Actually, for the patent which I recieved, this is exactly what the high-priced patent attorney did. He even admitted that to be the most efficient way to handle the process.

It WAS initially rejected as being too close to a German patent; the attorney then made a few adjustments of the wording in the first claim based on the examiners comments and the German patent, such that it more clearly defined the novel differences, and boom whe patent was granted.

The sad fact is that nine out of ten patents don't make any money. I don't mean, "don't make enough money to pay back the expenses of patenting"-- I mean, don't make any money.

Don't expect that you'll make money if you patent an idea-- the patent is only the first step in the process of commercializing the invention, and unless you are active and get your invention out in the world, it won't happen-- it's not true that there are people sitting there and reading every patent as it comes out, saying "oh, there's one I can invest in! I'll pay that guy buckets of money!" You have to do the work (and only ten percent of that work is technical. The majority is networking, social, legal, business, economic, and sales related.)

So: are you ready to do the entrepreneur thing? Long days of working on selling your invention to people with investment money, concatenated with long nights of working to make your invention work better, cheaper, and more reliably?

On the other hand, patenting needn't be terribly expensive if you do most of the grunt work yourself. The patent office has low fees for "small entities," which includes individual inventors.

If you publish, you won't profit directly (although if it's a nobel-prize winning invention, you will), but you will (in principle) prevent somebody else from patenting it. In practice, actually, the patent office is not very good at finding prior art in the literature (to be fair, they have roughly one day per invention to do both the literature search and also the write-up), so what you'll actually accomplish by publishing is to give other parties a piece of evidence that they can use to challenge the validity of the patent. (And, of course, the other parties who have the same idea will probably not have exactly the same idea, and the details of their patent will probably be slightly different, so not the entire patent will be invalidated.)

In the UK, fortunately you have a nice little website [businesslink.gov.uk] that tells you all about how to take ideas you have and turn them into money.

Fortunately, they also have a section on protecting your intellectual property [businesslink.gov.uk] that tells you how to do that as well (in terms of patenting, NDAs, Trademarks and Design right). I'm sure the processes aren't quite as straightforward as they look like they are here, but you get the point.

On a personal note - the question of whether to patent is a difficult one. In the intern

And not just in the free software sense. There are a lot of great ideas out there that don't have the capacity to become traditionally successful ventures. Either the capital isn't there (as in your case), the idea doesn't have enough potential to really stand on its own, patenting would be difficult because of prior art or there isn't a very strong business case to be made. In any of these situations, the idea might still be valuable to someone, somewhere and it would be a shame for it to fall by the waysi

Sorry, a slight error there. Smithies won the Nobel for incorporating genetic alterations into mice using embyronic stem cells- not knockout mice, although he did invent that technique at the same time as Mario Capecchi. For that work they shared the Lasker Award along with Martin Evans.

You asking if you should get a patent on a site that is notoriously anti-patent? I'd say you're looking for a certain answer.

At the risk of being modded down, I'm not going to give you that answer. Get the patent. It is good legal protection. It will help if someone else tries to steal your idea and sues you for infringing on the patent they just got. It will help if you later decide to actually get paid for your idea and need to keep others from stealing it.

+1. In business (and that includes the technology business), execution is everything. One of my great-grand-uncles worked with Guglielmo Marconi, patented lots of stuff related to radio transmission (in Europe, in an age when patents really meant something and were hard to get) and still died a poor man.

There is no sense in rewarding people for thinking up ideas. We simply don't need to, as good ideas will be thought out even if we don't.

The problem is finding people who would implement those ideas.

Agreed.

The notion of patents was created to protect not just ideas, but inventions -- complex collections of moving parts. At the heart of a truly novel invention, there's typically one or two really good ideas, but those ideas are just the beginning of the effort needing to make something that actually works.

Take your idea, and build something from it, and then you'll have something of value to protect. The idea itself isn't worth much.

I used to work for $BIG_COMPANY where we had a process where a team of lawyers and engineers would evaluate everything someone thought remotely patentable, and they would consider whether the patent was worth the time and money (usually several thousand dollars even though they used in-house counsel and did thousands of these a year). The analysis was based not only on the validity of the patent and the value of the innovation covered, but also t

I spent a good 3 weeks implementing an interesting idea that the person who came up with decided he wanted to patent. My conditions for working on it were that either the thing be treated as a trade secret or that it be allowed to be used in any Open Source application of any kind. He wanted some stupid mealy-mouthed non-commercial clause license.

In my opinion, no matter what the guy thinks of his idea, he will never make any money off of it by trying to keep such tight fisted control over it. His best b

"In my opinion, no matter what the guy thinks of his idea, he will never make any money off of it by trying to keep such tight fisted control over it."

laughable at best.

Look around at who makes money.

"Now the stupid idea is going to languish in obscurity because he's too afraid to actually get it out there in a way people will ever use."Well that is stupid. If he is protected he should be getting it out there. Of course if it's a stupid idea, then it doesn't matter if it's closed or open, cause it's stupid.

The days of patenting for the lone inventor are over, seriously. And what if you do patent it? You'll end up spend the bulk of your time, brain power, and meager resources defending it. Unless you have the resources to hire a cadre of lawyers, you won't even be able to defend infringements. And we've not even discussed international patents... which still won't stop Chinese knockoffs (at least not for the foreseeable future).

There is a lot of money being made in the (e.g.) open-hardware arena: you make a gadget (brilliant idea or not), sell a couple hundred or thousand, make some money and move on to the next thing (see Arduino, Chumby, SeeedStudio, Adafruit, Sparkfun). These guys publish the specs of pretty much everything they make, with enough detail that anybody else could copy it. Yet they are rather successful for small (closely held) businesses.

It's easy to get anything manufactured in small quantities these days. And by the time somebody bothers to clone your idea (which kind proves that you must have made money, in a backhanded compliment kind of way), the hope is you've made some cash, and can spend your time innovating on the next great thing.

If my ideas are indeed valuable, what is the best way to gain anything from them without investing too much financially?

What you're asking is impossible. If you really want to gain from your idea, then you're gonna have to take a risk. That's just life. And the willingness to take risk is what separates the plebs from the big winners.

And, for the record, I'm a proud pleb... I just happen to realize it.:)

Oh, don't get me wrong, I admire your ambition and tenacity, not to mention your financial planning. My point is simply that your situation is *far* from typical, and most people are not in the position to take the risks you've chosen to take.

But good luck! I wish you all the best. The entrepreneurial route is a tough one, but the rewards are enormous... which, really, was the point of my original post.:)

Another option that you can think of is to patent it in another country. Say, India/China etc.The patent will cost you very less - even if you go for a big shot lawyer, it will cost you in the range of 2000$ or less.

Now, once it is patented, you go about implementing the same and try to sell it in the patented country.If it makes enough money, you can apply for a PCS form to patent it internationally or maybe in US alone.

Please note that patenting usually does not guarantee you any income. The stats suggest

File a provisional patent application, only $100 if you're a small entity; requires disclosures, but not claims, and you have one year to begin the patent prosecution process. See 35 USC Section 111(b).

Less than 10% of the profit-stream is attributable in my experience to patent technologies. True value is that other 90% brought to the market by the corporation in design, development, marketing and support.

Waaay toooo much emphasis is placed upon technology in the value chain of venture building capital. Toooooo little protection is afforded by USPTO to protect by patent alone the great ideas and inventions.

Sell the idea/tech to the VC community who are best equipped to monetarize a marketplace solution to the problem you've solved. A 10% or less share after all is said and done is huge for the inventor.

Ideas on their own are a dime a dozen, and a lot of people get all crazy when thinking that their ideas are worth something, and need patenting, protecting, secrecy, etc.

Ideas are easy and incredibly overrated. Bringing the idea to something that can be sold, and then actually selling it, is the hard part.

So unless you have a real interest in pursuing this as a business, don't waste your money. If you have some interest, but aren't sure, then spend the $100 or so on a provisional patent. That buys you a

I hold three software patents. One was sold as part of a deal that made me several million dollars back in the 1980s. One made me $600,000 in licensing fees. I'm pursuing an infringement claim against DoD on the third.
I also have another patent pending. I put "Inventor" on my tax return.

Each of these patents was an early patent in an area where previous attempts to solve the problem had failed. In each case, the patented technology came with a working application or a successful demo. So these weren't just "ideas", they were ideas that worked. That's when patents are worthwhile - you've solved a hard problem, you're not with a big enough company to exploit it, and doing a startup doesn't seem to be the right answer.

The key point here is that a patent plus a demo version is more valuable than either alone.

If he gives his idea away, then everyone but him is going to profit off it. I say he deserves to get his cut.

I'm having trouble following the logic here. How would he not be able to profit off of an idea that others are able to profit from? Can he not do the same thing with that idea that the others would do, and compete with them?

Ideas aren't physical objects. When you give it away, you still have it.

Because he does not have the capital to survive the beating he will get from established competitors.

If it's truly a new idea, then there are no established competitors. He will be the first, and the competition will follow.

Of course, this entire discussion hinges on the ridiculous belief that ideas are worth something. They're not. Every moron has a million ideas. Implementation is everything. If he can't/won't implement the idea, then he doesn't have anything of any value anyway.

By established competitor I mean any established corporation that has an invested interest in the market that the new device targets or decides that it wants an invested interest in that market. Just because a device is new doesn't mean it has no competition. Large companies have large amounts of capital to throw into saturating the market with advertising, manufacturing at a price that you can't come anywhere near, and pounding you with their salaried team of lawyers.

Totally agree. If I come up with a great idea why the hell should I give it away for free? This bullshit opinion that all patents are evil needs to end. If somebody spends time and money develoing an idea and inventing something new they deserve some bloody reward for it, and something more substantial than the warm fuzzy feeling that they gave it to the world for free.

This bullshit opinion that all patents are evil needs to end. If somebody spends time and money develoing an idea and inventing something new they deserve some bloody reward for it

I don't know if as many people would have a problem with this sentiment per se. However, the patent system is regularly abused by people who haven't spent time and money inventing something and aren't actually going to spend any time and money producing the product either, but simply look to sit on the patent and make their money from suing anyone who does put the effort in and brings the product to market.
The other problem is the granting of patents (especially software patents) for things that the patent office may think is novel and worthy of protection, but we all know is so obvious that it wouldn't occur to any of us to try to patent. However, once the patent is granted, again the patentee puts all their real effort into suing anyone who dares to come up with the same idea.
It is this leeching and obstructive use of patents that I would imagine that most people have problems with.

Most people have a problem with patents because they are stupid and like the sound of their own ideological drivel.

Intelligent people have problems with the abuse and leeching of the patent system, and they clearly express that view whenever it is proper and applicable.

Stupid nerd people, and many of/. posters in particular (college kids or aging Hippies who still live in the 60's) have a problem with patents no matter what. If you want a patent, you are indecent. If you disagree, u r evil, luv M$, dro

Patents and Copyright are not evil. They are in fact a bonus to our society. The problem is with the ways special interests have warped patent and copyright to serve themselves rather than the public good. The pansy ass posters who think that everything should be given away are for the most part DIPSHITS.

Patent your idea. Then don't go around being an ass about it. Don't try to extend your right for 937 years. Do not sue anyone who comes up with anything close to your idea. And for God's sake do not start

Your choice is whether to be selfish or decent. Are you going to stand on the shoulders of giants, but sue anyone who would stand on yours?

How you proceed says a bit about who you are.

Bullshit morality by proxy combined with rhetorical, ideologotardic nonsense that can neither be proved, nor argued for logically.

Prove to me in a logically consistent manner that decency and selflessness are inevitably inconsistent and incompatible with one's natural right to get remunerated/recognized for one's original and hard-earned intellectual work, and to protect that natural right should the individual desires so.

Prove to me also that absolute selflessness as a trait is obligatory for one to

While I'd question the value in responding to trolls like this one, I do feel the need to congratulate you on the use of the phrase "ideologotardic nonsense". I don't think Webster's could have said it better!

If you have an idea worth turning into a business, you'll probably need to raise 10 or 20 thousand minimum in initial seed money anyway. Your investors take the risk, and you avoid spending any of your own money. Build prototypes, get patents, and attempt to raise full funding with that seed money.